MIT, Harvard, Yale researchers win ‘genius grants’

Six New England researchers have won “genius grants” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

MIT economist Esther Duflo, Harvard researchers Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan and Peter Huybers, Yale researchers Richard Prum and Mary Tinetti, and Project HEALTH founder Rebecca Onie each received $500,000 to further their research.

Mahadevan, above tries to answer everyday questions with applied mathematics — how cloth falls, or how skin wrinkles.

After the jump, watch video of the remaining New England grant recipients.

Esther Duflo, an economist at MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, studies the effects of social policies on poverty in Asia and Africa, focusing on women and children.

Richard Prum is an evolutionary ornithologist who analysis of bird feathers has challenged accepted theories of how birds evolved from dinosaurs, and how the feathers develop color.

Mary Tinetti is a gerontologist studying death among the elderly caused by falls.

Rebecca Onie co-founded Project HEALTH, a Boston-based nonprofit looking to improve health care for low income families.

Peter Huybers‘ (video not available) work as a planetary sciences professor at Harvard combones physics, statistics and mathematical modeling to study climate change.

Posted by Brendan Lynch

Tags: Esther Duflo, Genius Grants, Harvard, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, Mary Tinetti, MIT, Peter Huybers, Project HEALTH, Rebecca Onie, Rick Prum, Yale

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 11:49 am and is filed under Connecticut, Education & Training, Financial Services, Life Sciences, Massachusetts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.